Record demand of 659 MMcf/d earlier this week on San Diego Gas& Electric’s system forced the utility to curtail about 120MMcf/d of deliveries to six interruptible customers, including twopower generators and four commercial and industrial customers inSouthern California, a spokesman said yesterday. Demand on thesystem yesterday would have exceeded SDG&E’s capacity withoutthe curtailments, said SDG&E spokesman Art Larson.

“We’ve had some very high power plant demand here as well ashigh residential demand due to cold weather.” Demand for the24-hour period ending at 7 a.m. yesterday morning was 544 MMcf/dwith the 120 MMcf/d in curtailments. “It’s actually higher than therecord and would have gone beyond our capacity.”

The curtailments are expected to remain in place contingent onthe weather and power plant demand. “We’ve had demand from thethree power plants of about 320 MMcf/d. When we owned those plantsit was about 150 MMcf/d.”

Larson said SDG&E has about 80 interruptible customers andonly six have been interrupted so far in exchange for lower rates.

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